What does safety look and feel like to you?

Barney | Whakatū

Barney reflects on how becoming a parent motivated him to actively break intergenerational cycles of violence and addiction, making intentional daily changes to create a safe, healthy home environment for his daughter.

“For me, safety is waking up every single day and knowing that my daughter and my wife wake up and have a warm whare, a warm house. A safe house.

Becoming a parent completely changed my perspective of life. I was going about my life always doing stuff for myself. And then this beautiful mini-me and my mini-wife came into our lives and it wasn’t just about us. It is all about our daughter now. Every single move is intentional and, how can this make a positive impact on our daughter.

And it just made me think differently about actions that I take or maybe certain behavioural patterns that I’ve grown up with or how I grew up. We were talking earlier of intergenerational cycles and breaking those, which is massive for me and every day I’m actively trying to do small things to break cycles in order for my daughter to wake up and see me, see my wife and see us in a healthy home, in a safe home.

For me, what it looks like to be unsafe is to be in a house that’s constantly violent. Growing up in a household like that. Growing up in a household where addiction is prevalent and is part of everyday life within my family that I grew up with. And moving into adult life and realising that that behaviour and those sort of actions are not actually normal. But it wasn’t until in my 30s that I realised that this isn’t normal and it’s time to make small changes.

And that’s when I started making those small changes, that weight started coming off my shoulders, a lot more mental clarity, and I started understanding the bigger picture of what a healthy person looks like and a healthy environment around you looks like. And what is that? What is that like?”